Acid Test
by Samantha Winchester
Summary: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You. (Winner of the Tracy Island Writers Forum 2013 "Uncovered" Challenge. Revised and Expanded.)


"Mr. Tracy?" To her credit, the nurse only looked slightly confused when both the men in the waiting room, one sitting, one hovering by the window, turned to face her. "Mr. _Virgil _Tracy? The doctor will see you now."

Scott Tracy glanced down at his brother. Virgil took his time standing up, an exhausted kind of nervous energy gathering like a storm cloud around him. He stood eyeing the open door; for a moment it looked as if he might bolt. Scott came up beside him and pitched his voice low, reassuring. "It's going to be all right, Virg. I'll be right there with you."

Virgil's eyes flicked to him, then slid away, the storm dissipating as if he didn't have the strength to hold the center together. He hesitated another moment…then moved resolutely forward.

Dr. Patricia Marshall met them at the doorway to her office; tall and willowy, with short blonde hair and a grip that impressed both of them. She'd been a star basketball player in college, Penelope had told them. She was also a top flight psychotherapist – and she could be trusted implicitly. "I'm Patricia Marshall. You must be Virgil…you look exactly like Penny described you." She glanced over Virgil's shoulder, frowning slightly. "And you're Scott."

She waved them into the office, a calm, uncluttered space with a wall of windows and minimal decoration. Somehow the effect was peaceful rather than barren. "Virgil, take a seat over there," she said, gesturing toward a leather armchair at one end of a U-shaped grouping. As Virgil passed her she moved sideways unexpectedly, blocking Scott from following. "Penelope explained why you both feel it's necessary that you be present during the session. But it's not something I usually allow; I'd like that on record. If anything goes wrong, I may have to ask you to leave the room."

"Noted," Scott said, meeting her flinty gray gaze with no quarter given. He had no intention of going anywhere.

She looked over at Virgil, standing in front of the armchair she'd indicated. "And you're sure this is how you want it?"

"Doctor…I'm not so sure I want it at all." Virgil had that bolting look in his eyes again. But before Scott could react, Dr. Marshall surprised him again.

"Virgil, when was the last time you slept through a night?"

The evidence was on his face…the deep, bruised-looking shadows, the inability to hold anyone's eyes, the quick, nervous movements that were so at odds with the calm, steady, unflappable Virgil that Scott had known all his life. Scott saw his brother's shoulders hunch in defeat; wished for the hundredth time in the last few weeks that he could do something more than this to ease his obvious misery. But he'd tried everything else he could think of…they all had.

He shot a look of honest gratitude at Dr. Marshall, and was rewarded with a brief smile. Truce.

Something in Virgil gave in all at once and he sank down into the chair. The fingers of one hand immediately began drumming nervously on the leather arm. Dr. Marshall waved Scott to the armchair at the other end of the grouping, and seated herself at the end of the couch closest to Virgil. Scott noted that she had a smartpad waiting on the table in front of her, but other than that the surface was bare.

"Virgil, I want you to relax now." Scott found he was already doing so – Dr. Marshall's voice was as soothing as cool water flowing over the stones of a brook. It seemed to be having a similar effect on Virgil, he was glad to see. The drumming fingers were slowing. "You're here because I'm going to help you figure out what all these nightmares are trying to tell you. We'll get to the bottom of it, I promise. We'll solve the mystery."

Virgil nodded, his eyes meeting Scott's across the room. "Now," Dr. Marshall said. "Why don't you tell me what happened in your life right before all this began."

As Virgil began, hesitantly, to speak, Scott found his own mind falling back immediately to the same event. The Kaliningrad refinery fire.

* * *

_THREE WEEKS EARLIER..._

The sky was the color of molten lead, silvered in the early morning light. But pretty soon it was going to be black.

Scott Tracy dropped _Thunderbird One's_ left wing, banking hard to port and sending International Rescue's silver rocket plane in a screaming arc around the stricken oil refinery. His destination had been easy to spot from the air as he had streaked toward Kaliningrad over the choppy dark waters of the Baltic Sea: the thick column of smoke rising from the western end of the complex trailed down the horizon like an airborne oil slick. At its choking black base the flames burned so hard and bright it was difficult to look at them directly.

"_Thunderbird Five_ from _Thunderbird One_. I'm on scene now. Any update on those activists?"

The screen before him blinked into a view of his brother John's Nordic features. "Not yet, Scott. All we have is that text message and a rough location, a storage building in the eastern third of the complex. I've been listening in to the radio talk around the refinery, but nobody's talking about them. They're too busy worrying about the fire."

"OK, John. Keep me in the loop."

"FAB."

Less than a minute later _Thunderbird One's_ landing struts crunched through the thin layer of snow as she settled to earth upwind of the refinery, safely out of reach of any potential explosion. Scott checked the external sensors as the thunder of the engines faded: besides the usual pollution, no significant levels of any potentially hazardous chemical in the air yet. He put his bird on standby mode and went back to the locker to get his hazmat suit.

The salt-laden January wind stung his face as he dropped down the ladder to the ground. As long as the air was still safe to breathe, he'd carry the suit's headpiece with its built in faceplate and internal breathing apparatus rather than put it on. It was a lot easier to communicate without the headgear, and communicating in this situation was probably not going to be easy in the first place. Even without the constant blare of the refinery's warning siren, which was an assault on the ears even at this distance.

He gave the complex a quick visual scan, assessing the situation. It was a mixture of older brick buildings and newer construction, although "newer" was a relative term by the looks of the heavily stained and chipped concrete and the rusted railings. The stiff breeze coming off the Baltic was enough to keep a good portion of the smoke travelling up and away from the buildings, at least for the time being, but Scott knew from experience that this would only deteriorate over the next few hours. He spotted a small crowd of people, some in coveralls and a few in official looking uniforms, milling around beside three oversized, mismatched vehicles that looked like a cross between armored cars and fire tenders. More or less typical for equipment in that part of the world: old, bulky and outdated. Some of the men in uniforms had paused to stare back at him and his ship, but nobody made a move in his direction.

He wasn't surprised at the lack of a welcoming committee; this wasn't his first time in the Baltic. He'd even done a couple of tours flying F-35s in another part of Russia not so far from here while he'd been in the USAF, during the Second Bereznik War. In this Russian _oblast_, cut off from the rest of Russia by its geographic location between Poland and Lithuania, conditions were worse than in many other places in the former Soviet Union, and officials here were still struggling to repair the economic damage from its breakup all these years later. They weren't inclined to be friendly toward outsiders, no matter what the situation was - unless they came prepared to grease a lot of palms.

They were likely to be even less friendly when they found out why he was here.

"International Rescue?"

Scott turned to see a dark haired woman who looked to be in her forties, wrapped warmly in a chocolate brown leather coat with fur at the throat and cuffs and a matching fur hat. She at least looked like she was glad to see him.

"_Zdravstvujtye,"_ Scott dredged up the greeting from memory. "Elena Baranovsky? You're the one who called us."

She smiled, holding out her hand. "_Da_. I won't ask you to introduce yourself."

"_Spasibo,"_ he said. "And that's pretty much all the Russian I've got."

"So your operative told me when he gave me your arrival information," she said, her brown eyes twinkling just a little. Her English was good, if quite heavily accented. "He said you have, as you say, a tin ear."

"Remind me to thank him for that. Any news on your people?"

"_Nyet_." Her expression shadowed as she looked across at the refinery. "But I know they are still in there. The last thing I heard was the text message I told your operative about. The guards forced them both inside a storage building and locked them in. Alexei managed to get that message to me but after that, nothing. I am sure they took away their phones."

"And they weren't even threatening anyone?"

"They were filming the buildings and trying to talk to employees. This refinery is old, and in the opinion of many it is very unsafe. There are many dangerous chemicals and they are not properly stored. They have had several small accidents over the past few months, but nobody outside the company has talked about them. We know this from a safety worker who was fired for suggesting that an audit of the risks needed to be conducted. There has not been one done for many years."

Scott nodded toward the huddle of buildings. "Looks like he was right."

"Our group contacted the owners, demanding answers. They would say only that the release of any information would sensationalize the situation and raise issues of national security."

Scott snorted, shaking his head. "Unbelievable."

"Welcome to Russia."

"Come on," he said, "Let's get you suited up. We need to get over there."

"I hope you are armed," she said, her eyes serious.

He nodded. "Yes. Let's just hope it won't come to that."

By the time the incoming whine of _Thunderbird Two's_ turbines announced the arrival of International Rescue's great green transport forty minutes later, Scott had given up trying to do anything like "liaise" with any of the officials at the refinery complex. He'd seen immediately when he got close enough that his assessment of their equipment had been accurate…there was no way it was going to be adequate for the task they had in front of them. They'd been fighting this fire for three hours now with everything they had, and they weren't even putting a dent in its ferocity.

The heat was incredible, making Scott thankful for the internal cooling system in his suit, and the low-hanging black pall over the doomed facility was growing thicker by the minute. Occasional wicked downdrafts sent clouds of acrid smoke blowing across the fire crews, reducing visibility to near zero before the wind whipped them clear again. Scott broke out respirators for himself and Elena and tried again, but even after two ground-shaking explosions that sent spectacular fireballs roaring into the sky above them, raining down blazing debris that forced everyone to retreat temporarily, neither the refinery managers nor the local fire department would have anything to do with him or answer his questions about the people he knew to be trapped inside the storage building. It was like trying to talk to a wall of granite. The only upside was that they had their hands too full to spare the manpower to physically force him to leave, although Scott was sure a couple of times that their exchanges were going to come to blows.

"I'm sorry," Elena said at last, her expression taut as they retreated finally to the hoverbike. "I should not have come. They see me, they think you are on my side."

"I am on your side," Scott pointed out, temper on low boil, jaw tight with frustration. "The only good news here is that the fire hasn't reached the building where your people are yet. We should be able to get our equipment in there in time."

But she wasn't listening any more, staring past him in awe as _Thunderbird Two's_ football field-sized bulk lowered to the snow with impossible grace. As soon as the VTOL jets flickered and died, Scott raised his left wrist. "_Thunderbird Two_ from Mobile Control. The locals are hostile, so stay sharp."

"This isn't going to be easy," Virgil's voice came back, calm as ever. "The fire's on three sides of that storage building now. We could see that from the air."

"Roger that. Unload the _Firefly_ and get her over here as fast as you can. It's going to be quick and dirty. No matter what happens, our priority is to get those people to safety. We go in fast, find them and get them out."

"FAB."

"Mobile Control from _Thunderbird Five_."

"Go ahead, _Thunderbird Five_."

He could hear the tension crackling in John's words. "Never say it can't get worse. The fire chief just confirmed the refinery is leaking hydrofluoric acid."

Scott swung around, scanning the air over the buildings for the telltale white cloud. "No visual on that yet."

"Check your suit."

The hazmat suit's external sensor was clipped to a pocket on the right side. About the size of a smartphone, it dangled on its cord like a futuristic pocket watch. Scott flipped it over and checked the readings. "I'm in the clear so far. The wind is helping." He glanced back at the refinery. "What kind of shape is their mitigation system in?"

"Not great. They're trying to fix an engine failure in the primary pump unit and they've already ruptured a hose. And from what I'm hearing, there isn't enough water in the tanks to last more than maybe six, six and a half hours."

Scott watched as _Thunderbird Two_ rose on her struts to clear the pod. "No wonder they aren't bothering us too much. They've got their hands full. How much HF are we looking at, worst case scenario?"

"110,000 pounds, give or take. Anything within 25 miles would be at risk."

Scott scrubbed his fingertips through his hair. Just thinking about hydrofluoric acid on the loose made his scalp itch. One of the most toxic substances known to man, it was capable of eating through concrete, rock, metal and glass. It could penetrate skin easily, burning eyes and lungs and causing death from pulmonary edema. And if you were unlucky enough to get the concentrated liquid form splashed on your skin, the calcium-seeking raw fluoride ions would smash through the body, eating it from the inside out. It was a really bad way to die. "Have they started evacuation?"

"It's Kaliningrad, Scott. What do _you_ think?"

Scott forced his mind to stay on track. "Get on to base, see if there's anything they can do to get the authorities moving. _Thunderbird Two_, you copying this? We'll have to make it fast."

"Copy," Virgil's voice came back. "We'll do the best we can."

"Level A suits. And be careful."

"FAB."

The pod door swung smoothly down, forming a built-in ramp. Its leading edge had hardly touched the ground when the familiar broad concave sweep of the _Firefly's_ front scoop appeared at the pod's entrance. "What is that?" Elena asked.

"That's the _Firefly_. Cross a tank, a bulldozer and a fire tender and you come up with something like her."

"These machines, they are amazing," she said, shaking her head. "In all my life I have never seen anything like them."

"I'm sorry it had to be under circumstances like this." Scott lifted his wristcom again but before he could speak, he was thrown against the hoverbike as another huge blast shook the ground under his feet. Elena stumbled and fell to one knee. "Are you all right?" Scott called out to her.

But she was pointing past his shoulder. "The building! The one where Alexei and Katya are! It's on fire…"

Scott twisted around. Flaming debris from the explosion was raining down on the long, low concrete bulk of the storage building. "_Firefly_ from Mobile Control. The target is on fire."

"FAB, Mobile Control. We're going in now."

"Watch yourselves." Scott glanced toward the group of locals as the _Firefly_ trundled forward on her caterpillar tracks, her size dwarfing even the largest Russian fire tender on the site. The Russians stared as she passed. Two of the men he had tried to talk to earlier, the plant manager and his security chief, began arguing with each other, gesticulating wildly. Then they both marched purposefully toward Scott, flanked by two guards, both conspicuously armed with automatic rifles slung over their uniformed shoulders.

"Uh oh," Scott said drily. "I guess we finally got their attention."

Elena came to stand beside him, her smile nervous but her jaw determined. Scott nodded approvingly and reached over to open the storage compartment in the back of the hoverbike and remove his Sig Sauer. He made a show out of checking the clip for the benefit of the oncoming men, then set the pistol down on the seat, close enough to grab if necessary.

The refinery men halted a few feet away. The one who Elena had previously identified as the plant manager, a short, stout man with black eyes in a rage-reddened face, vented a stream of Russian. "He says you are trespassing," Elena said. "He must insist you order your vehicle to withdraw from his property."

Beyond them, Scott could see the _Firefly_, massive scoop lowered, pushing flaming debris aside as it powered its way to the storage building. "Sorry, no can do. There are people trapped in there, whether he wants to admit it or not. We're here to get them out."

Elena translated the manager's slit-eyed response. "He says he still does not know what you are talking about. The factory has been evacuated."

Anger made Scott step up closer to the other man. "Oh, sure. You'd like me to believe that, wouldn't you? A lot more convenient for you if those two people die before anyone gets to talk to them, right? We wouldn't want another one of those messy international incidents, would we?"

The manager's face darkened. He spat something, ejecting the words like blows. Elena didn't even get all the way through the translation before Scott's fury erupted into action.

It all happened very fast. Scott grabbed the plant manager's lapels and shoved him hard against the hoverbike. The security chief began shouting at him. Elena shrieked a warning and caught Scott's arm as it swung back. Scott swore in frustration and tried to yank free but she wouldn't let go, pleading with him to stop…and then, suddenly, he saw why. The guards had unslung their automatic rifles and were aiming them straight at his head.

Then the sensors on his and Elena's hazmat suits began to shrill for attention.

Startled, the guards glanced at each other, then at the security chief. Breathing hard, Scott stepped back from the plant manager, hands up in front of him to show the armed men that he was retreating. They didn't fire but they didn't lower their weapons, either. "Elena, tell them I need to check the sensors."

Eyeing the guards whitely, she did as he asked. Taking their continued stillness as encouragement, Scott carefully flipped up the sensor on his suit.

It wasn't good news.

"Elena, tell our friends that they need to get their respirators on. Our suit sensors are picking up the first traces of hydrofluoric acid gas. They get a lungful of that, they're going to be sorry in a big hurry."

Elena began talking very fast. Scott noticed for the first time that her hands were trembling. The plant manager snapped back, his expression still threatening. Scott pointed beyond him at the refinery. "Look for yourselves."

It didn't need translation. They all turned to look back at the buildings. The white cloud was quite visible now, rising from the roofline. Scott couldn't suppress the faint chill that shivered at the base of his spine.

The plant manager swung around and stared at Scott for a long moment. Then he barked something that didn't sound complimentary, and hustled his people back in the direction of the refinery. Halfway there, he broke into a run.

"Mobile Control from _Thunderbird Five_. What's going on down there?" John's voice was tense.

"It's all done," Scott said. "Let's get your headgear on," he told Elena.

"What do you mean, it's all done?" John didn't sound happy.

"Later," Scott said firmly. "They won't be bothering us now they've seen the gas cloud."

He got Elena quickly into her headpiece and gloves, and he'd just gotten his own gear in place and checked the seals when the ground convulsed again, even more violently this time. With a deafening roar, the building at the western edge of the complex blew apart. Flaming brick showered from the sky.

His wristcom began beeping insistently. He raised his wrist, eyes scanning for the _Firefly_. He couldn't see it through the smoke. "Mobile Control."

It was Alan, his voice frantic over the sound of something else, something he couldn't quite make out through the slight muffling of the hazmat gear. "Scott! I need help! Virgil's down!"

It was then that Scott realized that the other sound was Virgil. He was screaming.

There was no thought, no hesitation. With no conscious memory of how it happened, he was suddenly in motion, whipping across the refinery grounds with every ounce of speed he could summon from the hoverbike's engine. The going was rough and dangerous, through piles of burning rubble and close to zero visibility in places, and it felt like an eternity before he finally saw the _Firefly's_ yellow-painted rear end loom from the clouds of choking black smoke. "Alan! What's going on! Where are you?"

"Inside the building! Hurry, I can't get it…off him…" Alan's voice was taut with strain.

He halted the hoverbike beside the _Firefly_ and leaped off, moving as fast as he could in the direction of the building and cursing the bulk of his hazmat suit as much as he blessed it for its protection. "John, where's the door?"

John guided him to follow the wall to the left. At last he spotted the opening and plunged inside.

It looked like a war zone. The entire left third of the structure had collapsed, the jagged remains of the roof now open to the sky. Chunks of concrete were still falling intermittently. Fires burned unchecked. Scott ignored it all, hunting for his brothers. Virgil was still yelling. Tracking them with his wristcom in GPS mode, Scott swung to the right around a tall stack of what looked like large plastic storage bottles. Some of them had tumbled down off the top and rolled out over the floor.

Then he saw them. Virgil was on the ground on his back in a pile of rubble that looked like it had once been part of the ceiling. Pinning him down was a very large beam and several of the plastic bottles. Alan was heaving bottles and pieces of concrete roof away from him in an adrenaline-fueled frenzy.

It wasn't until he got up close that he could see exactly why Virgil had lost it. There was a jagged crack across his faceplate, and something was…_boiling_ on its surface.

That's when Scott remembered that hydrofluoric acid was stored in plastic.

"Go, Alan, get another headpiece!" he rapped. "_Move!_"

Alan gave a frantic look at Virgil and obeyed, scrambling around the fallen bottles and disappearing back toward the door Scott had come in by. Scott gripped Virgil's flailing arm in both gloves. "Virgil! Virgil!"

The expression of sheer terror in his brother's eyes made his stomach lurch. He forced himself to keep his voice level. "Listen to me. Alan's going to be back in just a minute with a new headpiece. I can't take this off you until he gets back, the gas is everywhere, if you get it in your lungs it'll burn you bad, you know that."

Virgil struggled, staring at the bubbling, seething reaction happening right above his face. Scott held tight. "It's gonna be OK, Virg. It'll hold. I promise. There's time. Just hang on."

Virgil's glove gripped his upper arm. Scott prayed like he'd never done in his life.

And then Alan was there beside them again with the replacement headpiece. Virgil saw it and immediately began thrashing again. "Get it off me, Scott, _get it off me!"_

Scott looked at Alan. "I'm off, you're on. Ready?"

Alan nodded. Scott unzipped the seals and gripped the headpiece on either side. "Hold your breath and close your eyes, Virg. On three. One, two…"

The transfer went by in a blur of speed. Scott hurled the fizzing faceplate away from him like it was radioactive, suppressing shudders, as Alan whipped the new headpiece into place over Virgil's head and fastened the seals. He could feel Virgil's body trembling with reaction through the hand that was still locked tight around his bicep. "Are you OK, Virg? Answer me, man. Are you OK?"

Virgil opened his eyes, breathing ragged. He managed a shaky nod. "Jesus, Scott…"

But there was no time. Scott looked up at Alan again. "Where are the activists? Did you get them out?"

"I got them into the _Firefly_ before the explosion," Alan said, his voice sounding no steadier than Virgil's. "Virgil was checking to make sure nobody else was in here when the place went up."

His expression suddenly went ashen, looking at something beyond Scott's shoulder. Scott turned quickly…and felt immediately sick. The acid had eaten all the way through Virgil's original faceplate, leaving a hideous melted hole right above where his brother's eyes would have been.

Too close. Way, way too close.

"Come on, Alan," he ground out, forcing his gaze away from what had very nearly been. "Let's get him out of here."

* * *

They made it back to _Thunderbird Two_ without incident, although Scott kept a careful eye on the plant officials as he rode escort on the hoverbike. From what he could see through the ever-obscuring downdrafts of heavy black smoke, the Russians were scrambling hard to cope with the rapidly worsening condition of the fire, but even with the chaos and poor visibility he knew it wasn't going to take them long to realize that the _Firefly_ was gone. Elena was waiting under _Two's_ massive green nose, and she watched them drive up into the pod with a nervous expression that melted to joy when Alexei and Katya descended from the _Firefly's _cabin.

Leaving them to their reunion, Alan parked the _Firefly _and Scott triggered the remote to close the pod door. As it swung up and locked, he ushered Virgil and the three Russians toward the modular medical bay that all the pods carried. Virgil was still pale and shaky, but he waved off Scott's questions with a terse "I'll be fine. Take care of them."

Alan came back to assist and they punched up the medbay computer's checklist for hydrofluoric acid gas exposure. Elena pitched in, helping to check lungs and nasal passages, flush eyes with a solution of calcium gluconate and apply the gel form to all exposed skin just in case. While they were still working on the two Russian rescuees, Virgil disappeared abruptly in the direction of the latrines, and after a couple of seconds they could hear him throwing up. Scott caught Alan's worried glance and knew exactly what he was thinking – he couldn't get the image of Virgil's ravaged helmet faceplate out of his head either.

Virgil returned after a few minutes, shivering and subdued. Scott insisted on a quick tox scan, which to his relief came back clear. He told his brother to go on up to _Thunderbird Two's_ sleeping quarters, located behind the cockpit. "Get some rest. Alan can fly _Two _home."

Uncharacteristically, Virgil didn't argue. He just turned and shuffled out of the door.

Scott frowned after him, but whether he liked it or not, there was still too much to do for him to pursue it right now. Leaving Alan to watch their rescuees, he exited through the side door into the pod's command center module. He flipped on the external camera feed to check on the fire while he called base and gave his father the status report – no activity toward International Rescue's vehicles so far, but his gut was still telling him to keep watch. He asked about the evacuation, and Jeff told him that everything that could be done, such as it was, was already being done. His father also agreed with his assessment of the situation. The political climate in the area had been tricky to start with and their rescuees were about to become a very hot property indeed.

"I want you to lift off as soon as possible," Jeff said. "I just talked to Penny – she's setting up a press conference. She'll be waiting for you at a location outside London – John will get you the coordinates. Hand off the Russians there and come home. Penny will take care of the rest."

"Yes, sir," Scott responded, still watching the fire. "Virgil's not doing so well. I don't know why. I'd like to—"

"Scott, get out of there," John broke in suddenly. "They're calling in reinforcements. Two truck- mounted Greyhounds, en route. ETA your location fifteen minutes."

Scott knew only too well what that NATO designation belonged to: the Pantsir-S1, a radar-equipped short to medium range anti-aircraft missile system. He didn't want to stick around to find out if they really would open fire on International Rescue. He acknowledged John's message and raced back to the medbay. "Company's on the way, people. We need to move _now_. Wheels up in five."

As _Thunderbird One's_ VTOL jet roared to life and she lifted up high above the still blazing refinery, he stared at the screen and thought that if he never saw this place again, it would be much too soon indeed.

The handoff to Penny went smoothly, and Elena promised she would keep them apprised on what happened. With the time difference, it was late evening on Tracy Island by the time they got home, and Scott was pleased to see that Virgil seemed to be rallying slightly, although he was still a little pale and far too quiet. Unused to his normally unshakeable brother being so visibly affected by anything, he took Virgil straight to the island's medical quarters for Brains to check him out. Brains agreed with the assessment of the pod medbay's equipment and pronounced him physically fit, as well as extraordinarily lucky. Scott got Virgil out of the med quarters as the scientist launched into a colorful description of what that acid could have done. He didn't even want to think about that any more.

In the lounge, Jeff took one look at his second son and sent him to bed to sleep it off. After Virgil left the room, the elder Tracy conducted a quiet debriefing with Scott and Alan, with John on screen from _Thunderbird Five_. Jeff told them that he had done everything possible to go over the refinery officials' heads and get the nearby area evacuated, but he could tell he hadn't been one hundred percent successful. At last count the hospitals had reported over 400 cases of respiratory distress caused by the toxic cloud of gas. "You did your best, all of you," he said, and Scott had to look away from seeing his own frustration and anger so clearly mirrored in the faces of his brothers. "Virgil wasn't hurt, thank God. And you got those two people out of there, which is what you went there to do. More than that, you can't take responsibility for."

"Much as it sucks," Alan muttered. Scott glanced at him, seeing again in his mind his youngest brother's ashen expression at what the hydrofluoric acid had done to the faceplate they'd just taken off Virgil. He made a mental note to keep an eye on Alan for the next couple of days. Virgil might have been the one actually at risk, but they'd all gone through the trauma with him.

"Look at it this way," Jeff continued. "Because you rescued Katya and Alexei, their testimony to the press will prevent the people responsible from covering up what happened. That should make you feel good."

"I guess so," Alan sighed. "I just feel like it wasn't enough."

"It was all you could do," his father said firmly. "Sometimes that's just how it is, Alan. I've learned along the way that it's not up to us to understand why people do the things they do, even when their actions put others at risk, and even when what they do makes us very, very angry."

Feeling eyes on him, Scott glanced up at John's vidscreen. John, the only one to have heard his altercation with the refinery manager, had kept silent about it during the debriefing. Scott nodded his thanks, saw John give the ghost of a smile in return.

"OK, boys, let's wrap this one up," Jeff said. "I'll let you know what I hear from Penny."

They broke up the meeting in a subdued mood. Despite a couple of generous glasses of his favorite single malt, it took Scott a long time to fall asleep that night.

* * *

He opened his eyes to darkness, all his senses abruptly awake and alert. Something was wrong.

He kept perfectly still for a long moment, listening. He heard nothing at first but the soft slap of the waves on the beach far below his open balcony doors , but something had tripped his subconscious alarm system, he was sure of it. The prickling feeling at the base of his skull never lied.

Then he had his answer. A hoarse yell, borne by the offshore breeze from another nearby open balcony door. _Virgil. _

The sound of his brother's distress kicked him in the gut, tearing open the thin skin that had barely healed over the trauma of only a few short hours before. Fighting off the stark mental image of Virgil struggling beneath that hideously bubbling faceplate, Scott dragged on shorts and went for the door, slapping his palm against the release plate. The fireproof brushed steel slab seemed to take forever to open. Once in the hallway he didn't have far to travel – Virgil's suite was next to his, and since the suite on the other side of Virgil's was empty this month thanks to John's rotation on _Thunderbird Five_, nobody else was close enough to hear anything. Scott pressed the button on the com unit beside the door. "Virg! Are you OK?"

No answer. That could be good or bad… Scott hesitated, but the sick, helpless feeling of anxiety was climbing. He keyed in the override code.

The door rolled aside obediently. As soon as he entered the suite he could hear the faint rustling of sheets, and then the sound of broken, incoherent muttering. Standing in his brother's bedroom doorway, he saw Virgil tossing and turning in his sleep, and even in the dim light of the bedside panel, it was easy to see his face was bathed in sweat, his expression twisting with distress. Scott moved up beside him and reached down to touch his shoulder.

The moment skin touched skin, Virgil yelled out and shot upright in bed, hand clamping on to Scott's wrist with bone-breaking force. His eyes stared wildly, uncomprehending. "Easy, Virgil!" Scott resisted the urge to pry the iron fingers loose from his arm until his brother realized who he was. "Easy. It's just me."

It took a moment, but slowly reason returned. "Scott…? What…what's going on…?"

"You tell me." Scott nodded down at his wrist.

Virgil let go immediately, his confusion and embarrassment palpable. "Bad dream?" Scott asked.

Virgil stared down at the sheets. He ran a hand through damp chestnut hair. "I don't remember, Scott. I don't remember anything at all."

"Be grateful for small mercies," Scott said. "I'd rather have it that way, too, considering."

He saw Virgil suppress a shudder. "Yeah."

"Best thing to do is get back on the horse. Go talk to Brains in the morning about modifying our faceplates so that never happens again, to any of us."

Virgil nodded, still not meeting his eyes. Scott watched him for a moment. "You OK?"

"Yeah." Quieter this time. Virgil lay back down, staring at the ceiling.

Scott hesitated another couple of seconds, reluctant to leave it at this...but his brother was giving him the clear sign that the conversation was over, at least for now. Pushing him at this point would only make him retreat further.

Years of experience with Virgil had taught him patience. And besides, things always looked better in the morning.

* * *

Except Virgil, who only looked worse.

Scott watched him shuffle into the kitchen as though he were hung over, mumbling when anyone asked him a question and filling the biggest mug he could find with coffee. He tried to catch his eye but Virgil wouldn't look at him. Then his father pulled him aside to go over some plans in his office for the new pod vehicle design, and between that and several other interruptions, it was well after lunch before he had time to think about his brother again.

He took the elevator to the monorail as soon as he could get free and got out at the control room above _Thunderbird Two's_ hangar. _Two_ was up on her struts, which put her enormous bulk one hundred twenty feet in the air, not much lower than the control room's observation glass. Scott looked around for a minute until the bright flicker of an arc welder drew his eye. He watched for a bit as Virgil worked on a metal seam in a piece of equipment he couldn't quite identify from this far up. Alan was with him, assisting, talking and laughing animatedly. Scott couldn't hear the conversation, but it looked healthy from where he was. He decided to leave them to it.

It was dinner by the time he saw Virgil again, and he seemed in better spirits, not quite as subdued as earlier, although he didn't add much to the back and forth across the table. Jeff relayed a report from Penelope, telling them that the press conference had been a huge success and had put the conditions at the Kaliningrad refinery squarely onto the firing line of public opinion the world over. The international incident the refinery officials had been so eager to avoid was now camped on their doorstep.

The evening ended on a high note. Intending to have a quiet drink with Virgil on the balcony, Scott found his plans thwarted when his brother slipped out early and went to bed. Then again, perhaps it was for the best. A good night's rest would do Virgil a world of good. Scott went to challenge his father to an overdue game of pool in the rec room instead.

* * *

At three-thirteen a.m. the shouting started again.

Scott jolted out of a dead sleep and scrambled next door. This time Virgil was sitting up in bed, covered in sweat and trembling like he'd run a three-minute mile. But just like the previous night, he couldn't remember anything about the nightmare. It was nothing but a great big blank.

"Nothing?" Scott probed. "Nothing at all?"

The anxious look in his brother's brown eyes told him that he was doing the best he could to remember, but was still coming up empty.

"Do you want me to stay for a while?"

Virgil didn't answer, wiping the sweat off his face with the sheet. Scott gave a half grin and went out to the lounge, returning with a couple of glasses of Scotch. He handed the one with ice in it to Virgil and sat down on the side of the bed. "I was planning on doing this after dinner, but you went to bed early."

"Yeah, that didn't work out so well, did it."

They drank together in companionable silence for a moment. Then Scott said, "It'll be OK, Virg. You just got shook up more than usual on this one. We forget what that's like...we've been doing this for a while now; it takes a lot to throw us off our game. This was new. It's always hard when we hit something we haven't been up against before."

Virgil looked at his glass, swirling the liquid in it a little, making the ice cubes clink together. "Remember that cruise ship? The one that was going down off Antarctica, and they called us because nobody else could get to them in time?"

"The _Pole Star_? How could I forget? That name is etched in my memory. And I can still see John's face when he told us we were being called out by a ship that hit an iceberg. I don't think he thought we'd believe him at first."

Virgil shook his head. "Forty-five degree list on her when we came on scene, and the weather... God, that was a tough night."

"We had no idea what we were doing at first, but you have to hand it to us. We caught on fast."

"And we got them all off before she went under."

Scott reached out and clinked his glass against his brother's. "To the _Pole Star_ and all who sailed in her. Although I didn't ever want to see ice again by the time it was over. Even in a glass."

Virgil smiled, and Scott could see that it was working. The conversation and the Scotch had loosened the tension in his brother's shoulders, and the anxious frown had eased. It would be all right now.

* * *

Except that it wasn't, and two weeks later, their lives were in shambles.

Virgil thrashed in the grip of nightmares he couldn't remember once, sometimes twice a night, and woke up feeling like he hadn't gotten any rest at all. And because he couldn't sleep, neither could Scott. But Scott, with his high metabolism and frequent insomnia, could get by for a lot longer without the seven or eight hours Virgil's system had always needed in order to replenish itself. After a few days of Scott taking it on the chin, Jeff had had enough. He ordered that they would take shifts, all of them, sleeping a night in Virgil's suite living room at a time.

It made no difference who was there. The nightmares continued.

Brains ran tests, scans, everything he could think of, but could find no evidence of anything wrong. Nothing, not even the medication that they tried as a reluctant last resort, made any difference.

Near the end of the second week, IR was called out to help rescue thirty-eight trapped miners from a coal mine in southwest China that was beginning to flood. Other rescue teams were also rushing to the area but only IR had the _Mole_, and the _Mole_ was the only hope of reaching the underground cavern in time. With the help of _Thunderbird One's_ remote camera, Scott managed to establish a connection with the miners and get an idea of what they were up against. By the time Virgil, Gordon and Alan arrived in _Thunderbird Two_, time was short and the _Mole_ had to be rolled straight out to the insertion point.

All went well until the last trip back up from the pit. Scott was talking to Gordon, getting their status, when the big boring machine's telemetry feed on the Mobile Control console abruptly went dark. "_Mole_ from Mobile Control. _Mole_ from Mobile Control. Come in, Gordon. Are you reading me?"

Nothing. Scott tried his wristcom. "Gordon, can you hear me? Alan? Virgil!"

A burst of static, then he heard Alan's voice, but not talking to him. "Virgil! Gordon, what's wrong with him? What's happened?"

And there it was again, that sound, just like at the Kaliningrad fire. Virgil was screaming.

This time, though, he couldn't charge to his brother's rescue. There was nothing he could do but wait.

It was only a few more seconds before the _Mole_ feed flickered back to life on the console, but Scott felt like he'd aged ten years. "_Mole _from Mobile Control. What the hell is going on down there?"

Gordon's face came into view, looking stressed. "We're OK, Scott. We had some kind of power failure, but the systems are back online now. See you on the surface."

He signed off before Scott could ask any more questions.

Back above ground, the _Mole_ disgorged her passengers and Scott's hands were immediately full helping get the remaining miners taken care of by the local emergency teams. Try as he might, it was almost an hour before he could look around and realize that Virgil was nowhere to be seen.

Gordon came up beside him at last. He indicated _Thunderbird Two_ with a nod. "He went up to the cockpit. He was a bit shook up. I told him we could handle this without him."

"What happened to him down there?"

"Beats the hell out of me. The lights go out, I'm trying to get the emergency generator to kick in, and Virg just starts yelling like he's on fire. Scared the shit out of us, not to mention those poor guys we just rescued."

"But why?" Scott persisted. "What was wrong?"

Gordon shrugged. "Nothing. The lights came back on, he was just standing there. Alan asked him what happened; he said he didn't know."

"He didn't _know_?"

"That's right. He said he didn't have any idea."

* * *

When they got back to the island, Scott had a private meeting with his father and recommended that Virgil be grounded. When he explained why, Jeff wasted no time in agreeing with him. Virgil, withdrawn and miserable and looking like he was on the brink of nervous exhaustion, made no protest.

He woke up three times that night, still with no memory of why.

Lady Penelope and Parker landed on the island the next morning. The visit was coincidental, on the way back to England from a month's stay at Bonga Bonga, but Penelope swung into action as soon as she saw what was going on. She got the lowdown on the situation from Jeff, and then told him that she was taking Virgil down to the pool for a long talk, and that nobody was to interrupt them.

She came back up alone after a couple of hours, and called a quiet meeting with Jeff and Scott in Jeff's office.

"I've seen this sort of situation once or twice before, in my line of work," she said thoughtfully when they were alone. "It seems to be one of the hazards of the way we all earn our livings…the close proximity to danger." She leaned back in her chair and crossed her long legs. "The temptation is to diagnose it as simple post-traumatic stress disorder, but from what I've learned talking to Virgil, I think the problem here might be quite a bit more complicated than that."

Scott frowned, glancing at his father. Jeff said, "What do you mean 'more complicated,' Penny?"

"I mean that the incident we are all aware of can sometimes be just a trigger for something held more deeply in the mind. We've all seen films where some poor fellow with amnesia gets a knock on the head and then suddenly remembers who he really is, haven't we?"

It began to dawn on Scott where she was heading. "You mean that what happened to him in that building might have shaken loose something else? A memory, something like that?"

"Yes. That's exactly it, Scott. Except in this case it doesn't seem to have made it all the way up to his conscious mind. He's only revisting it when he sleeps."

"And in the _Mole_ yesterday," Scott said. "When they lost power."

"Quite," Penelope nodded.

Scott saw palpable relief cross his father's face at having a solution to grasp at. "Supposing this is the case…what do we do?" Jeff asked. "How do we help him?"

"There's only one way," Penelope said soberly. "He has to remember."

* * *

"Now that your eyes are closed, continue listening to the sound of my voice as you continue to relax. As you go into trance you will still hear my voice. Imagine your thoughts floating away like balloons, up and away into the distance. Just relax and listen to the sound of my voice. You are so completely relaxed that you lose all awareness of your body. All your tensions melt away."

Scott found he had to fight not to follow Dr. Marshall's suggestions himself. He had never seen a hypnosis session before and had been honestly skeptical that it would work. But it seemed to be unfolding exactly the way Dr. Marshall had told him it would.

"Scott," she had warned him again before she had started the session, "I must caution you not to speak or interfere in any way, no matter what happens, for his sake. It could be traumatic for him to be interrupted at the wrong moment. Do you understand?"

He had told her he did.

Virgil was breathing evenly now, body relaxed, eyes closed. Dr. Marshall's voice flowed on, sending him deeper and deeper into the trance state. "Virgil, I would now like you to imagine that you are standing at the top of an escalator. In a few moments I will begin to count down from ten to one. When I say the number ten you will step onto this escalator, and as I count slowly down you will ride the escalator down until I reach the number one, where you will find yourself at the bottom of the escalator and step off. Step on to the escalator now and hold the hand rail as you begin your journey deeper and deeper into trance."

Step by step, she counted Virgil down on that imaginary escalator. It certainly took longer than he had expected for her to accomplish the trance state, but Scott didn't mind…he could have listened to that voice forever. He wondered suddenly if there was such a thing as a "contact high" from someone else being hypnotized, and had to suppress a snort of amusement at the idea.

"You find yourself standing at the bottom of the escalator now, and you step off and there is a corridor in front of you. You are floating down that corridor now, each breath is taking you deeper and deeper down that corridor now… In this state you can remember many things. You can become aware of things that have been hidden away…things you might have been frightened of, painful things you have been avoiding for a long time. And when you are in this state you will find that these things cannot harm you…nothing in your own mind can ever harm you."

Virgil's eyelids flickered, just a little. Scott found himself leaning forward, suddenly anxious. Dr. Marshall sensed it and smiled at him reassuringly. Then she turned back to Virgil.

"Virgil, as you float along the corridor, you're going back to find the place where your dreams come from. Your dreams cannot hurt you; you are always safe in your mind. You are going back to the place where the dreams began. Are you at that place, Virgil?"

"Yes." Virgil hadn't spoken in so long that the sound of his voice made Scott jump.

"Where are you, Virgil?"

"The hospital."

"Why are you in the hospital, Virgil?"

"We had an accident. My mom was hurt bad. We were trying to get away from the hurricane and we crashed. Johnny was really scared."

_Jesus._ Scott stared at Virgil in shock. Of all the things he might have thought he was expecting, this had been nowhere on the list.

"Were you scared too, Virgil?"

A long pause. Then: "Yes."

"And now you're in the hospital?"

"Yes. We were in our truck for a long time, and it was so dark...and then Scott said that even though Mom told him not to leave us, he had to go find help. Scott's my big brother." He paused, frowning a little. "I wanted to go, too, but he said I had to hold my new brother and watch Johnny and Gordo."

"How old are you, Virgil?" Dr. Marshall asked softly.

"Five and a half."

She glanced over at Scott. Scott could feel how frozen his expression was. His heart pounded in his chest, so painful it felt like it was about to burst through his ribs. He wanted to jump up and run screaming from the room; knew somehow that Dr. Marshall knew that. He flinched away from her gaze.

"Tell me what's happening now, Virgil."

"One of the doctors is coming back." Virgil paused. "He's asking where my daddy is."

"And where is your daddy, Virgil?"

"He's in Houston. He's an astronaut. Scott's telling the doctor. He's got lots of blood all over him."

Something like a whistling sob escaped from Scott's lips. He couldn't stand this anymore. He stood up abruptly. He needed to get out of this room, now.

Dr. Marshall's stare stopped him. She made a sweeping, commanding sign for him to sit back down. Slowly, reluctantly, he obeyed. Talked to himself, a mantra, grasping for calm.

_This is about Virgil. You can do this. You can get through this._

Dr. Marshall turned back to Virgil. "Virgil, you're going to the dream now. You're going to what's behind the dream."

Virgil's face suddenly contorted. "It's not true! It's not true!"

"What isn't true, Virgil?"

"It's this big kid, make him go away!"

"What's happening, Virgil? Why do you want him to go away?"

"He's a big liar! I hate him! He says my mom's dead and she's never coming back! It's not true! Scott, tell him it's not true!"

Scott squeezed his eyes shut, scrubbed at them with his fingertips.

Virgil's voice rose to a wail, stabbing right through his heart. "Why won't you tell me it's not true, Scott?"

_Oh, Christ, Virgil…_

"Relax, Virgil. Relax... Breathe deeply... Remember, nothing here can harm you. Relax… Tell me what's happening now…"

Tears were leaking from Virgil's closed eyelids. "Scott says…he says Mom will always be able to see me, even if she's dead and she's never coming back…"

Scott stared at his brother in agony.

"The big kid says it's not true! He says he knows because his mom died and when you die it's dark and you can't see anything, they put you in a box under the ground and throw the dirt on top of you so you can't get out, and there's no air and you can't breathe and it's dark, it's so dark you think you've gone blind and you'll never see anything again, ever…"

Realization flooded through Scott like a spear of light. Suddenly, it all made sense. The very real threat to Virgil of being blinded by the hydrofluoric acid that was eating through the glass of his faceplate. The sudden utter, total darkness in the _Mole_ when the power went out. Virgil's youthful fear of the dark, which had first manifested itself when they went to live with their grandparents in Kansas right after their mother had died. A fear that his brother had claimed not to remember in recent years.

Of course, Virgil had always claimed he didn't remember the night Lucille Tracy died, either. For twenty-four years, Scott had lived alone with that memory. Now, for the first time, that was about to change.

Virgil was still sobbing hysterically, gulping air. Dr. Marshall took a few moments to calm him down, still speaking in that flowing, soothing voice. Eventually Virgil's tears slowed, and he quieted.

"All right, Virgil," she said at last. "It's time for you to come back. You're back in that corridor now, floating back toward the escalator…"

Scott wiped the tears from his own eyes. He just stared at Dr. Marshall, unable to figure out where to put himself, what to do or say. All he knew was that he'd just been through one of the most profound experiences of his entire life.

Patricia Marshall's smile told him that she understood perfectly.

* * *

They stood together on the balcony of the villa, watching the sun sink slowly below the horizon in another spectacular tropical sunset. Scott raised his glass. "To memories, old and new."

Virgil's mouth quirked. He lifted his own glass and clinked it against his brother's. "To memories."

They were silent for a moment, watching the sunset. Scott said, "You're not sorry, are you..?"

"That I remember what happened now?" Virgil took a swallow of Scotch. "No. It'll…just take some getting used to, that's all. I've lived so long without it. It feels…strange. Like when your arm falls asleep and you know it's still attached, somehow, but it doesn't feel quite like it's _yours_…"

Scott nodded. "It'll come back. The feeling."

"I know."

Scott stared out over the glittering ocean, his chest tight. He forced the words out. "I want you to know, Virg, if you ever want to, you know, talk about it…"

Virgil smiled, but his eyes were serious. "I know that, too. You've carried this by yourself for so long, Scott… and I want to. I really do. Just give me a little time."

Scott exhaled slowly. It was a start, he thought. And it was enough, right then. It was enough.

* * *

Later that evening, Tin-Tin was headed down storage corridor 3 in the bowels of the mountain, looking for storage room 3E. As she passed storage room 3D, the door opened and Scott came out, holding something small in one hand. He saw her and grinned, the first really relaxed expression she'd seen on his face in many weeks. "Why, Scott," she said, smiling. "You look very pleased with yourself."

"Oh, I am, Tin-Tin. I am."

He strode off down the corridor toward the monorail, whistling softly to himself. Tin-Tin shook her head and kept walking.

* * *

Virgil almost didn't notice it at first. Still a little nervous at the prospect of his first night back after the hypnotherapy, he sat down on the side of the bed, breathing deep, calming breaths, the way his music teacher had taught him when he'd had a bout of nerves before a piano recital. Then it caught his eye, nestled on his bedside table, propped up against the base of the lamp.

He reached out in wonder, picking up the little blue and white moon with its smiling face; paint chipped in places and rubbed off almost entirely in others.

His old nite lite! He hadn't seen it in years! But how…

But of course, he knew exactly how. His grandmother never threw anything away if she could help it…and he knew just who had gone hunting in the crates of old belongings for this. He would have to thank Scott tomorrow for knowing exactly the right thing to do.

He sat for a moment, turning it over in his hands…then reached out and plugged it into the wall socket beside his lamp. Mr. Moon shone comfortingly, cheerfully…reminding him of a time long past. A time he was going to get to know a lot better, soon.

Virgil smiled and turned out the lamp. Somehow, he knew he wasn't going to dream.


End file.
